Book review: Head First Design Patterns

If last week’s book review was too complicated for you, perhaps this book is more suited for you. Less design patterns, but a funnier way to describe them.

Content and opinions

Only twelve patterns are explained, but more important is the fact that each of them is detailled, with examples and exercices, as well as important phrases displayed as images. With humor, these are the caracteristics of the “Head First” collection.

Instead of using the same example throughout the book, each chapter has more or less its own concrete example. The latest chapters explain how they can interact to create complex applications, or how they can define new design patterns (as MVC for instance), then how it will change your way of thinking software architecture.

Conclusion

This book focuses on the most used and perhaps useful design patterns. This way, it can present them differently than a simple catalog, but I have to say that this approach will not be suited for everyone. For instance, I appreciate books that go straight to the point.

This kind of book is well suited for people that want to start with design patterns, but not for people familiar with them: they should go for catalogs.